more smatterings from the pacific smorgasbord

i've got just a few more cards to show from the box that brian at play at the plate sent to me.  the box was mostly pacific brand cards, with some 2002 upper deck vintage thrown in as well.

here's a 1999 pacific prism otis nixon card

he's wearing the ellis valentine face mask, which actually reminds me of lando calrissian's helmet from the start of return of the jedi.

1999 pacific paramount ben grieve

1999 pacific private stock john olerud

i thought the olerud was an insert, but it was not.  just a shiny base card

2000 pacific paramount randy velarde

the mustard background works for the a's cards, but that was by design. there weren't any dodgers from this set in the box, but their cards have a blue background that also complements their uniforms.

2000 pacific private stock craig biggio

which is a sort of precursor to 2001 topps gallery and the upper deck masterpieces sets of the late 2000's.

this is a 2000 pacific diamond leaders card of the reds

i have a couple of these (the brewers and dodgers) in my memorials collection.

the last pacific card i'll show also comes from 2000 pacific.  it's a derek jeter ruby foil parallel

jeets was also prevalent in the 2002 upper deck vintage cards that were in the box - he shows up on three of the postseason scrapbook subset cards

i know that the first one there is more of an alfonso soriano card, but jeter is waiting at home plate so it's a jeter card, too.

thanks again for the great cards brian! i had a blast looking through the box.

a few more double play turns and some other cards from the heart of texas

here is some more goodness from the box of cards that i received recently from brian at play at the plate.

a few more double plays that are new to my collection - 1999 pacific denny hocking

1999 pacific crown collection rey ordonez

2000 fleer ultra tony batista

and a couple from 2001 fleer tradition - ron belliard

and pokey reese

i'll give fleer some credit for bringing to mind 1956 topps without being totally obnoxious about it.

brian included a 2002 fleer ultra eric karros gold medallion edition parallel

which cleanses the palette between vintage-y looking cards, more of which you are about to see.

a good portion of the box included cards from 2002 upper deck vintage.  this was the set that was basically 1971 topps with the photo moved above the team/player/position text.  here's the carlos febles card from the set

looks like a rundown.

strange to see david ortiz in a twins' uniform after all these years

one of the more interesting cards in the bunch was this ichiro card

with him legging out an infield hit, which he often did.

now, upper deck would tell you that they were paying homage to 1971 o-pee-chee, which is why the backs of the cards are yellow

this would be what the latter series of o-pee-chee looked like in '71, with the rectangular photo like topps had for the entire set run.

anyway, we know that o-pee-chee claim to be tenuous at best since upper deck wound up altering their 2009 o-pee-chee set to look nothing like the 1977 set which it was rumoured to be featuring prior to its release.

whether by design or not, some of the cards do remind me of 1971 topps, like this bernie williams card

that reminds me of the tommie agee card from 1971, just a bit more 'zoomed in'.

here are a few cards from the postseason scrapbook subset

an alfonso soriano walk-off in the alds

jeter walk-off in the world series

i'm not sure why upper deck chose to say "a last at-bat" on soriano's card, but "walkoff" on jeter's

more jeter love from game 5 of the world series

he drove in two runs and took to breakdancing at home plate, apparently.

finally, however, let us recall the fantastic end to the 2001 world series, thanks to mark grace and luis gonzalez

that was awesome.  just like the box of cards brian sent.  i'll be showing some of the pacific goodness in another post or posts.  stay tuned…

the eddie mathews memorial patch

eddie mathews played for the braves in boston, milwaukee, and atlanta - the only person to do so.  his rookie year of 1952 was the team's last in boston, and his last year as a brave, 1966, was their first in atlanta.  mathews led the milwaukee version of the braves to the world series in back-to-back years (1957 and 1958), and twice led the league in home runs while in wisconsin.

although he did not finish his career with the braves (he was traded to houston prior to the 1967 season, and then to detroit during that season where he played through the 1968 postseason), mathews still ranked first or second (either ahead of or behind hank aaron) in many team offensived categories at the time of his retirement following the tigers' world series win over the cardinals in 1968.

mathews passed away in february of 2001, and the team wore a memorial patch with his number 41 on their left sleeves for the entire regular and postseason.  here's a couple of cards showing the patch from recently inducted hall of famer tom glavine.  this first one comes from 2002 upper deck vintage

while this one is from 2001 leaf rookies and stars

of course, there is really only one player who should represent this memorial in my collection, and that's chipper jones.  like mathews, jones was a braves' third baseman, and like mathews and glavine, he will likely end up in the hall of fame.  besides, jones has supplanted mathews on many of those braves' career leaderboard categories, pushing the hall of famer into third place.  here's jones' 2002 topps total card

and his 2002 donruss fan club card as well

but the card in the binder is this 2002 topps gold label card

mathews was just the 7th player in big league history to reach the 500-home run plateau, and he held the record for most home runs in a season by a third baseman (47) that stood for 27 years until mike schmidt hit 48 in 1980.  the braves had retired mathews' number in 1967, but he wore it again when he returned as the team's manager in the early 1970's.

jose canseco final tributes

i am not ashamed to say that i was, and still am to a degree, a jose canseco fan.  as any good card collector in 1986, i tried for as many of his rookie cards as i could, and i followed his home run and stolen base exploits with quite a bit of interest.  you may recall that i had adopted the a's as my american league team with the arrival of rickey henderson and billy ball in 1980, quickly and shamelessly abandoning the excitement over the angels and don baylor that i had felt in 1979.  so, i still had a soft spot for oakland in the mid-80's, and was glad to see canseco making them relevant again.

even as i joined the 'ste-roids' chant from the right field pavilion at dodger stadium during game 1 of the 1988 world series, i marveled at the grand slam canseco had hit in the first inning.  it is still one of the top 3 hardest hit balls i have ever seen in person (willie mccovey and willie stargell hit the other two, with albert belle and carlos delgado not far behind).  anyway, i was always willing to give canseco the benefit of the doubt even as there became no doubt.  i was annoyed when the yankees claimed him on waivers in 2000 just to block another team from picking him up as i knew it would be difficult for canseco to sign on with another team in 2001.  as luck would have it, the angels signed him just before spring training, but then released him in march (although topps still put out cards of him in 2001 in the angels' uni).  i thought that that may have been it, but to his credit, canseco went to the independent league and played minor league ball until the white sox came calling at mid-season.

thanks to canseco's perseverance and the fact that frank thomas was lost for the season, we were treated to some non-yankee (and angel) final tributes in 2002.  i've got a lot of them.

2002 donruss

with full career stats on the back

2002 donruss fan club

perhaps the 'bulkiest' photo of canseco on any card, and also with complete career stats on the back

2002 fleer maximum

the back of which gives a closer look at the travels of canseco towards the end of his career

he came oh-so-close to another 30/30 season while with the blue jays in 1998.  i believe he also hit the longest home run in skydome history that year as well.

2002 fleer platinum

more full career stats

did anybody ever look at those graphs on the back of 1987 (and 2002 fleer platinum) cards?  i didn't.  if i had more initiative, i would dig up canseco's 1987 fleer card and compare the graphs between this card and that one.  i just looked his card up on comc, and now recall that the graphs on the back of '87 fleer cards were different than those above.  never mind.

2002 fleer tradition

again with the full career stats, with room to spare at the bottom

202 fleer triple crown

another final tribute with the full career stats, although fleer doesn't care to give individual rows of stats to each team played for in a single season.  advantage donruss and topps.

speaking of which, here's canseco's 2002 topps 206 card

no stats on the back, but a note that canseco became the first man to hit 400 home runs and steal 200 bases in a career

2002 upper deck authentics

here, even though there is just one row of stats on the back, we can see his career totals

and notice that he stole 2 bases on the season to finish with exactly 200 steals.  he was caught one time.

2002 upper deck vintage

this was the most blatant to-date rip off of topps that i recall; upper deck's 2001 decade 1970's set kind of looked like 1975 topps, and their 2001 vintage release looked a lot like 1963 topps.  here, they dropped the text to the bottom of the card and made the backs yellow to look like the late series o-pee-chee cards did in 1971

they weren't ripping off topps, it was o-pee-chee that they were using.  the only problem was that upper deck didn't acquire the rights to o-pee-chee until 2006 if i recall correctly.

perhaps my favorite two final tributes for mr. 40/40 came from topps.  canseco, as he had done in 2001, signed a deal prior to 2002's spring training, this time with the expos.  topps, as it had done in 2001, issued cards featuring canseco his his new uniform.  never mind that he was released again during spring training, we get these final tributes from 2002 topps

full career stats, with league leader designations.  i thank you, topps.

and 2002 topps chrome

with the same info on the back

i also appreciate topps (and fleer platinum) for putting strikeouts on the backs of their cards.  canseco retired with 1942 k's, which at the time was good for second on the all-time list behind only canseco's 1987 a's teammate reggie jackson.  jackson had 101 more homers than canseco, however.

canseco eventually returned to the white sox organization in 2002, appearing in 18 games for their triple-a  affiliate and slugging 5 home runs, but didn't get back to the big leagues.  he has since played in the minors in a few different seasons (2006, 2010-2013), and even had a short (one-day) stint in dodger camp prior to the 2004 season.  it's too bad topps didn't put out a card that year like they did in '01 and '02...